Apple Is Sitting On A Pile Of Cash Roughly Equivalent To Qatar’s Entire Economy - By Amina Adam

Tech giant Apple released its quarterly earnings Tuesday and revealed that the giant pile of money on top of which its executives sit has reached a mind-boggling $203 billion. That’s a figure nearly equal to the GDP of Qatar, the Middle Eastern oil kingdom.

According to the World Bank’s data for 2014, the size of Qatar’s economy totaled $211.8 billion, edging Apple’s cash pile of $202.8 billion. For a more exact comparison of Apple’s nation-state-sized checking account, consider Peru, with a 2014 GDP of $202.9 billion. Then again, Peru is a country of some 30 million. Qatar is a country of 2 million.

While only a small amount of Apple’s cash pile is actually cash — the accounting term includes a variety of liquid assets — the vast majority of that money sits overseas to avoid U.S. taxes. Apple is notorious for its aggressive efforts to avoid U.S. corporate taxes and has set up a web of subsidiaries to keep its tax bill to a minimum.

Incredibly, as the company is sitting on more than $200 billion in cash, Apple is actually taking on debt. Because debt is so cheap at the moment, the company has calculated that it is cheaper to issue more bonds rather than repatriating some of its cash and facing a bigger tax bill.

All hail, Emir Tim Cook.

SOURCE: NEWS AT 247